


we will raise warriors

by gracedbybattle



Series: new beginnings [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Female Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Mandalorian Culture, Marriage Proposal, Near Death Experiences, Pregnancy, Whumptober 2020, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26749465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracedbybattle/pseuds/gracedbybattle
Summary: It shouldn’t take a brush with death to bring two people to marriage, but Obi-Wan and Cody never seem to do things the easy way.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & Clone Troopers, CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: new beginnings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810051
Comments: 14
Kudos: 269





	we will raise warriors

If he makes it off Sarrish alive, he’s going to propose, Cody decides. 

“Stay with me, Commander,” Waxer’s voice is tight, high with tension. His eyes are trained on the last insurgents, picking them off with a sharp eye. “You don’t get to march away yet.”

Cody tries to respond to his lieutenant, but all that comes out of his mouth is a bloodied gasp. He can feel a warm trickle of it escape his mouth and roll down his neck. He tries to swallow it back down and fails.

“Stop trying to kriffing say something,” Boil growls at his side. His hands are wrist deep in Cody’s abdomen, keeping his guts from spilling out.

White and gold gauntlets have been discarded in the dirt, and the blood has reached them, staining the plastoid. Cody stares at it, trying to escape the feeling of Boil’s bare hands pushing his intestines back into his body. The deep gash across his stomach nearly dropped his innards into the dirt. The only reason they aren’t lying on the ground is because of Boil. 

Cody’s not sure why he’s not dead yet. But it won’t be long now. He’s sure of it.

He’s dying and he needs to get the words out. He needs Obi-Wan to _know_ , before he’s gone.

Words he needs to say, for someone to pass along for his unborn child, condemned to never know their father or how much he wanted them. 

A child he’ll never get to meet. 

Stubbornly, he tries again. Nothing comes up but blood.

Boil swears. 

“ _Ne’johaa!”_ he snaps and Cody’s vision whites out for a moment as his grip tightens. “Lie still!”

“Commander, the medevac is one click out. I need you to hang on,” Waxer has taken out the last of the hostiles, but he’s still scanning the landscape to be sure. “Don’t make me tell the General about this. You know I hate to upset her.”

 _Obi-Wan_ , Cody thinks and his mind is full of her. He’s slipping away, he can feel it, like the pain is becoming disconnected from his body. He’s never been this close to death before and he wonders how it will feel, slipping into _manda._

He hopes that joining _manda_ and becoming one with the Force really are the same, then maybe he can see Obi-Wan again one day. 

“Helix is going to strangle you, Commander,” Boil says. All the ferocious anger has bled from his face. It’s bone-white with fear. “You better be awake when he gets here, or he’ll yell at me instead.”

Cody doesn’t respond. He wants to reassure his men, placate them like he’s done so many times before but he can’t. The pain is a white hot inferno and it’s burning out everything else. 

All he can think about is Obi-Wan. 

Obi-Wan, and their child. 

With some sort of inhumane, commando type strength, he pulls on the words until they come loose.

“Tell-tell Obi-Wan,” he gurgles around the hot mess of blood in his throat. Boil openly blanches and Waxer jerks away from his post. “Tell her I-I want-“

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Waxer orders. He sounds gutted and his eyes look wet. “Don’t you give that to me, Cody. You can tell her yourself. You’re going to be fine.”

“No,” Cody retorts and both his ARCs faces crack. They know it too. “M’not. Need you. To tell-“ 

A piercing siren assaults his ears and scatters his brain. He shut his eyes and exhales back, resting against an overturned, twisted sheet of metal. 

“No you don’t,” Boil says tightly and Waxer slaps Cody sharp against the cheek. His eyes fly open, brown orbs rolling in their sockets. “That’s the evac, they’re coming. Stay with us, Commander.” Waxer’s pleading now. “Just another minute.”

Cody wants to. He tries, valiantly. But even he cannot fight the pull of death so close. His eyes slip shut, even as his men are yelling, and the world fades away.

— 

The bright, white lights of the medbay is the first thing he sees when he rejoins the world. For a moment, Cody blankly thinks that death looks a lot like the _Negotiator_. 

It’s startling to be alive when he was so clearly dead. Rejoining the living is almost disconcerting. He smells like bacta and it makes him want to gag, he’s always hated the stuff. Looking around, Waxer is the sentry beside his bed, slumped in a chair and asleep. His lieutenant looks exhausted and completely disheveled. 

One of the machines next to his bed is upset, a light and sound are going off steadily. The soft beeping quickly brings Helix through the door, looking like the righteous fury of _manda_ reborn. He takes one look at Cody, blinking at him, and his thunderous expression crumbles.

“ _Shab,”_ Helix swiftly steps around to Cody’s other side and sinks into a waiting chair like his strings have been cut. “Little gods, Commander. Stop giving me a heart attack.” 

The 212th medic peels back Cody’s blanket and zeros in on the thick patch of bandaging covering his entire midsection. The linens are clean, not blood soaked or spotty like they’ve been the past few days when Cody was restless and ripped his stitches out repeatedly. 

They sedated him heavily just to keep him still. If Cody so much as twitches in the next cycle, Helix is going to have an aneurysm. He shouldn’t even be awake yet. Stubborn, kriffing Commanders. Cody is watching him, confused and blank, questions obvious in his eyes. 

“You nearly bled out in Boil’s hands,” Helix says without prompting. He glances at Waxer, still asleep. “They’ve barely left since we got you stabilized. I just sent Boil to bunk down an hour ago. I’ve been letting them switch off while the other sleeps. Stubborn _shebs_. They’re almost as bad as you.” 

Cody frowns, but the murkiness of sleep is still heavy in his mind. He can’t make the words come. All he gets is a frustrated sound in his throat. 

Helix pins him with a look. “Don’t even think about it,” he says and then softens. “I had to restart your heart. Twice. Don’t make me do it again.”

The admission breaks whatever angry emotions Helix is using to propel himself up and he lets his head fall into his hands, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. 

Cody wants to reach out and touch him, but his arms feel like lead. He lies still.

Helix swipes at his eyes. His voice is cracked now. “Go back to sleep, Cody. It’ll all make sense later, when the sedation wears off.” He lays one hand over Cody’s own and meets his eyes. There’s a grief swimming in his brother's eyes and Cody hates it, hates that he put it there. 

“Get some rest. We’ll be here when you wake up,” he says and Cody slips back under.

— 

Returning to the land of the living for the second time is easier. Cody feels more awake and less like he’s swimming through a fog. The medbay looks the same, except the chair at his bedside is vacant. 

He has less than a second to wonder about that before the door swishes open. It’s Helix, unsurprisingly, but the person behind him makes Cody’s heart skip a beat.

Obi-Wan-had been away from the 212th since before the final battle on Sarrish. The baby has been making her sick, sicker than usual, enough to warrant concern from both Kix and Helix. 

She’s been with the 501st, investigating the source of the illness with an old friend from the Jedi temple. A healer, from her padawan days that she assured them all could be discrete. Cody was brainstorming before the final battle how they could arrange to transfer a healer from the Temple to the 212th, at least for the interim. It’s not like Helix couldn’t use the help. 

But whether the days away with the 501st have been helpful seem little concern now. Obi-Wan looks past the point of exhaustion, bruised eyes and hands tucked into her robe, the way she does when she’s unsettled and trying to hide it. Cody wonders if the baby is bothering her again. The moment she sees Cody awake, her eyes widen. 

“Told you he wouldn’t be long, ma’am,” Helix says, completely unsurprised. “A bantha might still be under at that dose, but they’re not nearly as stubborn as the Commander.” 

_A bantha doesn’t have anything to come back to_ , Cody means to say but his tongue is still thick in his throat. He coughs, but it does little for the dryness. Obi-Wan is at his side immediately, tipping his head back with her hand and pouring a trickle of water down his throat. He swallows gratefully once, twice, and clears it. 

_“Me'bana?”_ he manages. 

“Glad to see you’re back with us,” Helix says, standing beside Obi-Wan. His eyes are sweeping over the bed and the pad in his hand. One hand tugs back the sheet to examine the bandaging before he nods, seemingly satisfied.

“We’re weaning you off the sedatives and painkillers slowly. Slowly, I said,” he mutters at Cody’s frown. “You spent three days in a bacta tank. And that's after the surgery. Not a muscle moves without my say so or I’ll dunk you back in myself.”

He is deadly serious. Obi-Wan, her face a mixture of relief and concern, looks like she agrees with him. Cody nods, not trusting his voice yet. 

“Good,” Helix says, clipping back his pad and smoothing down Cody’s blanket. He pats his calf firmly. “I’ll be back after a while. Keep an eye on him, General?”

“Off course Helix,” Obi-Wan replies. “I’ll make sure he behaves.” She turns to Cody as the medic leaves, picking up his hand in hers and holding it close. 

Cody doesn’t say a word, just drinks in the sight of her. He’s starting to understand that he didn’t die on Sarrish, but instead has spent the past few days teetering on the brink of oblivion. It’s a startling realization.

There’s so much he wants to say. 

“How’re you feeling?” Obi-Wan speaks first, the logical question. It seems superficial, like an opening with something much more weighted behind it. 

“Better,” Cody manages. 

“We nearly lost you, you know,” Obi-Wan says quietly. Her hand is squeezing his, her blue eyes bright with relief and taught with emotion. “Waxer commed me when they evaced.”

Her breath shutters slightly. “Each time they had to pump your heart back to beating, I thought that was it. I was preparing to live without you.” She stops to press her lips shut, tightly, keeping the emotion at bay. Cody doesn’t interrupt to try and comfort her. He senses she needs to say the words. 

“This war has made it clear how short life can be,” she continues. “And I won’t waste any more time wondering or wishing I had said things and didn’t. I won’t live like that anymore.”

“Obi-Wan,” Cody starts. His voice is rough, but he needs to get the words out, now. He knows what they are. He wants to say them. 

“I’m going to need you,” Obi-Wan continues. “I know that cannot always be guaranteed. But I need it, all the same.” She brings his hand to rest over her stomach and the look on her face is deep with meaning. “He is going to need you, too.”

“He?” Cody’s mind spins on the word, staring at his hand, hovering over the place where their baby grows. 

He has been at nearly every appointment, every check with Kix and Helix. He was there to hear the heartbeat for the first time, to stare over the scans with her. He suddenly hates to have missed this one, desperately. 

“The scan yesterday showed a boy,” Obi-Wan confirms. There’s a soft smile on her face. “Kix thought we might want to keep it a surprise, but I wanted to know.”

“A boy,” Cody marvels, letting the word roll off his tongue in wonder. 

“The scans aren’t always correct,” Obi-Wan warns. “But it feels right to me.”

A son. Just that revelation makes the entire world seem more crystalline, stark lines sharper in his gaze. A boy, maybe with Obi-Wan’s freckles or Cody’s dark eyes. Something real, tangible. 

Something precious. 

Her hand is warm over his, just as warm as the heat he can feel through her tunic. He swallows hard. The memory of the blood soaked battlefield is in his peripheral vision, a reminder how close he was to never having this. 

And there are things he wants to say, too. 

“On Sarrish,” he starts and his voice breaks. Obi-Wan startles. She must not have expected the change in conversation so abruptly.

He clears his throat and starts again. “On Sarrish, when I thought I was going, you were the only thing on my mind.” He meets her eyes. Obi-Wan’s blues are clouded with emotion. “Both of you,” he affirms. 

“Oh,” Obi-Wan softly. 

“There were things I wanted to say, that I should’ve said before,” he admits, stroking a hand over her knuckles. He can’t stop now. “I tried to tell Boil and Waxer, to pass it along. If I wasn’t here.”

“I know,” she says and crooks a smile at him. “Boil was quite furious about that, by the way.”

“I’m sure,” he says with a wince. “I didn’t want to put that on them. But I needed you to know. It was all I could think about.” He swallows and reaches for his courage, willing the right words to come.

“I love you, Obi-Wan Kenobi. I never want to parted from you, not until we’re both grey and ready to pass to the next world. I would raise our child with you, wherever we are. I pledge myself to you, if you would have me.”

“I would,” Obi-Wan says without a moment of hesitation. His General is no stranger to Mandalorian customs. “I would say the words with you.”

It isn’t quite the backdrop he imagined, laid up in the medbay, unable to stand with his _cyare_ and meet her eye to eye to say the words. But there is no time like the present, and he’s not going to march away from this world without sealing the bond between them. 

He takes both her hands in his own, twines their fingers together and begins the _riduurok_ , slow and concise. 

_“Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar’tome, mhi med’dinui an, mhi ba’juri verde.”_

His voice is clear, strong. He thanks the gods for it, just to spare him the decency of strength in this moment that he’ll always remember. Obi-Wan echoes him, eyes locked with his. 

_“Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar’tome, mhi med’dinui an, mhi ba’juri verde.”_

And with those words, it’s official. She is his and he is hers. Married.

The chasm in his heart fills and the anxious weight in his chest lifts at the realization. No one can take this from them, no Jedi Council, not even the Chancellor. This is just for them. He leans forward, mindful of his bandages and Helix’s warning, but he can’t not kiss his new wife. 

Obi-Wan meets him, pressing her mouth to his with intensity and pressing him back against the pillows, one hand back to cup his head like he’s fragile. They’re kissed many times before, but this is different, sweeter and more precious. They’re married, finally, with their baby between them. 

Obi-Wan breaks apart and Cody breathes heavily for a moment. The rush of emotion has made his head light. 

“Stewjoni have no particular marriage customs,” Obi-Wan tells him. Cody knows. He’s spent the last year reading about his General’s history, Jedi and Stewjon customs alike. They have no marriage ceremony or ritual, not like Mandalore. “But I do have something I could give to you.”

“You already have,” Cody says. It seems obvious. He presses a hand to her abdomen, feels the tiniest swell there. “It’s right here.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes mist over but she shakes her head. “Not just that.” She’s still holding onto his other hand and she squeezes his fingers. “I know how much value Mandalorian’s place in a name. Kenobi isn’t a historical clan or a large house, but it could be yours, as much as it is mine.”

“Cody Kenobi,” he says the words aloud. He likes how they sound, the way they roll off the tongue.

He smiles at her, even as he feels his strength beginning to wan, the drugs still pulling at him to sleep. He brings her hand up to brush his mouth against the back of it, heart full of affection and nearly bursting with love. “I would be honored, _cyar'ika_.”

“It’s done then,” she smiles and presses another kiss against his mouth before she lays him back against the pillow, pulling the blankets up. His name has never sounded sweeter than it does coming from his _riduur_. “Cody Kenobi.”

He blinks, trying to keep the spring of tears at bay and keep his eyes open to enjoy this moment. There should be drinks, food and celebration. 

Rex should be here, and Wolffe, Bly, Fox, Waxer, Boil, all of his batchmates and close brothers. Rex in particular is probably going to kill him, first for getting injured and then for getting married without any warning. 

He groans. 

“What?” Obi-Wan quickly stiffens into worry. “What’s wrong?”

“My brother,” he says and scrubs a head over his face. His hand trembles. He needs more rest, even if he hates to admit it. “He’s going to kill me.” 

Bless Obi-Wan, she doesn’t even have to ask which one. “Rex will be fine, dearest.” She’s even smiling, teasingly. “He’ll be so grateful you’re alive, he won’t even mention our shotgun wedding.” 

Cody snorts. Unlikely, but he’ll let Obi-Wan believe it. His eyes droop closed of their own violation, headless to his attempts to open them. 

He can almost feel a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. A wife and a son. How he got so lucky, he’ll never know. Obi-Wan presses a hand to his shoulder, and a final kiss against his brow. 

“Rest, Cody,” his _riduur_ says softly. His wife. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Neither is he.


End file.
